Before the Shadow Falls
by RomanDeLaRose
Summary: One-shot 'missing scene' from The Mystery of Edwin Drood. John Jasper prepares for an important interview.


After blacking his boots to the highest shine, he takes the brush to his hat. No dust, no flaw must be seen; the figure he cuts must represent him in the full flower of his manhood.

The hat satisfactorily buffed, he turns to the shaving mirror and frowns. Are his whiskers perfectly symmetrical? He spent so long sharpening his razor that the strop quite wore down this morning, but he reminds himself that any further experimentation with his sideburns might give the impression of an effete vanity he would sooner die than own to.

Nonetheless, he regards himself longer, stroking the outgrown hairs, deep in thought. What will she see when she looks at him today? What has she seen before?

He checks his shirt for spotlessness and adjusts his stock once, twice, thrice, around his neck. He catches sight of a fine spray of ink on one finger, acquired in the annotation of a manuscript earlier in the day. That must be washed off.

Waistcoat, fob, trouser creases all examined and judged to be impeccable, he goes to the basin and scrubs off the ink with his nailbrush, a little more harshly than necessary, but there is a nervous energy about him that seems to require the outlet.

Cologne? Or even some of the terrible pomade his nephew favoured? A dab of the former, only enough of the latter to keep his brow clear of stray locks.

The day is warm and close, but he dons his mourning coat of heavy wool. Before he reaches the door, he checks himself and takes something from the pocket: a small brown labelled bottle. In the act of uncapping it, he is interrupted by a rattling at an interior door and he closes his fist swiftly around it.

"Mrs Tope," he says, with an attempt at a genial smile. "You are early."

"Thought I'd check if you was short of anything, sir, afore I runs my errands in the High Street."

"Oh, no, no, I am amply provided for. Pray do not trouble." He waves his free hand, hoping to push her back into her own half of the lodging by the force of the gesture.

"If you're sure." She looks about the place with a charwoman's eye. "Your hearth wants sweeping."

"It can wait. I do not suppose I shall light a fire tonight."

"Indeed not, dreadful hot it is, I declare."

She appears to wait for him to resume the conversation, but he does not, so she bows her greying head and takes her leave.

The bottle reappears, is uncapped and a small draught taken.

Only when his shoulders drop and his expression relaxes is it fully evident how tautly strung this man has been.

He breathes deep, takes a black silk scarf from the coat rack and leaves the lodging.

He wants to cut the air down for confounding his well-laid plans. It means to make him sweat, it means to oppress his senses.

A wood pigeon and a lark compete for mastery of treetop melody as he hastens along the path. The sounds merge into one in his mind, fracturing, acquiring chord structures and harmonies that do not exist.

"You are off-key," he says, out loud, when a crow's harsh caw breaks in. The startled expression of a passer-by draws his attention to his mistake. He should not have taken that tot of laudanum. He must keep his wits.

He hurries past a group of ladies, seeking to engage him in conversation, with the merest tip of his hat. Further on, he wilfully ignores a pair of choristers, truanting from the cathedral school, when they gather up their marbles and run into a side alleyway, away from him.

Nobody and nothing shall stop him.

He turns into a driveway, the approach to a handsome house off the Cloisterham High Street. Instinctively, as he always does, he looks up at the window of the music room, where he sometimes used to see her, twitching the curtain, hiding from him as soon as he she was spotted.

Even though she is not there now, the memory makes him smile.

"Hide from me, will you? Not for much longer, my love."

With an air that suggests his life has been leading up to this moment, John Jasper knocks on the Nuns' House door.


End file.
